


I’m Not Calling You a Ghost (But Please Just Haunt Me)

by ChronoXtreme



Series: I Look To You (An Azure Moon) [2]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: And doesn't at the same time, Byleth is not one of Dimitri's ghosts, Dimitri pines for Byleth, Don't be like me folks, F/M, He wants her to be, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I literally wrote this in one sitting, Inspired by Florence + the Machine, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), no beta we die like Glenn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-15
Updated: 2019-11-15
Packaged: 2021-01-31 03:15:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21439315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChronoXtreme/pseuds/ChronoXtreme
Summary: Just as he hates and loves himself, Dimitri hates and loves the ghosts that haunt him.Byleth isn’t one of them.(He hates and loves that too)
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & My Unit | Byleth, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/My Unit | Byleth
Series: I Look To You (An Azure Moon) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1514141
Comments: 7
Kudos: 158





	I’m Not Calling You a Ghost (But Please Just Haunt Me)

**Author's Note:**

> "There's a ghost in my lungs and it sighs in my sleep  
Wraps itself around my tongue as it softly speaks  
Then it walks, then it walks with my legs  
To fall, to fall, to fall at your feet"
> 
> \- I'm Not Calling You A Liar, Florence + the Machine

Seeing the dead was no longer horrifying for him. 

Dimitri used to scream at them when he was a child, right after the Tragedy. When the lamps would be dimmed and the torches extinguished, he would see their faces hiding in the corners of his bedroom, and he would howl and howl until Uncle Rufus or Rodrigue would burst in, ready to kill his would-be attackers. 

Then they learned that what chased Dimitri wasn’t flesh and blood but whispers and sighs, and so they left him alone when he screamed at night. He quickly learned to keep silent regardless; the way the maids and minor lords and ladies looked at him locked his lips better than if they’d been sewn shut. And with the slow passage of time, with every dull throb of his heart that still beat _ (you should have died that day, Dimitri, along with the rest of them) _ the ghosts faded and faded until he no longer saw them. 

Their voices never left, but at least he could tune those out. 

He was so good at tuning it out, in fact, that his friends never noticed. It was a hard mask to wear, a hard play to stumble through, but every time they looked at him with smiles and laughter instead of fear or scorn, he considered it sweeter than a standing ovation. 

There were three people in the world who could see through his mask.

Felix knew what he was, what he tried every day to cut away from himself. He’d seen Dimitri at his lowest, knew the brutality of his strength, the depth of his sins. He saw the monster he hid.

Dedue saw the opposite. “You feel too deeply for your own good, Your Highness,” he’d told him once when Dimitri paced his room after a bad night terror. “Your kindness is a great strength, but also a heavy burden to bear.” Dimitri wasn’t a monster, but a saint. 

One person saw him as neither demon nor saint. 

From the beginning, Byleth saw him as just a man. 

And great goddess above, Dimitri had never felt so liberated in his whole life. 

Of course, she was wrong. And just like all the others, she had paid the price for being close to him. 

* * *

Those who hadn’t known Dimitri very well had praised him for his wholeheartedness. “Your determination is incredible, Your Highness!” “The dedication you possess to this task… why I’m surprised it hasn’t been accomplished already.” “It’s like with every strike, you never hold back.”

They were all wrong, however. Everything Dimitri did, besides wielding a lance and seeking out his revenge, was done in halves. 

His smiles were never full, just awkward quirks of the lips in a sad imitation. Outside of lancework and riding, his scores were only slightly above average. He slept half as much as the other students — never enough, according to Dedue — and ate halfheartedly. (It wasn’t easy when he couldn’t taste a damn thing) Time spent with friends was half enjoyed, half resented because it was lovely to be just another student at the Officer’s Academy, but there was only so much time in the day, and he had to do more, be more, the ghosts were always calling out to them—

Even with regards to the ghosts, half of him hated them. Despised them, even. 

Half of him clung to them. They were the only ones who wouldn’t abandon him now. 

It seemed that fate itself knew that Dimitri’s life was a life lived in halves. So it took his eye. _ Now, _ he would imagine Fate whispering, _ you see just as much as you are. You’re not just human, are you? You’re a beast too.” _

And he wanted to be_ just_ a beast. A beast didn’t feel things, a beast didn’t cling to the past, a beast didn’t possess _ sentiment. _

But he couldn’t let the dead go. And he wanted them to leave just as much.

It seemed that he was forever destined to war within himself. When he slaughtered the Imperial dogs that sacked another one of his villages, half of him laughed as they scurried away, while the other half wept at the senseless destruction. When he had the misfortune of running into another human being that didn’t want him dead, half of him craved the simple contact, while the other half shied away from it. Even as he dedicated himself to his goal, his steps steady as they grew closer and closer to the Empire, half of him felt triumphant.

The other half just felt broken. 

He was never alone. The ghosts kept him company, and he hated and loved them for it. But whenever he shifted his gaze towards them, he never saw one face.

Byleth never stared at him. Never whispered his name with that soft voice. Never dug her cold nails into his feverish skin. Never asked why, why didn’t you save me, _ why did you let me die, Dimitri— _

He hated that she wasn’t there. At the same time, he was eternally grateful. 

Because perhaps, perhaps, perhaps she wasn’t dead, perhaps she was still there, somehow, someone who had managed to _ survive _ Fate’s cruel hands snatching away everyone that he ever loved. 

But as the days turned into weeks, and then months, and then years — goddess, it had been _ years _ since that demon invaded Garreg Mach and stole everything from him again — he realized that he was forgetting. 

Apparently his memory was starting to halve too. 

Was it the saghert and cream that she loved, or the sweet buns? Did she ever sing as she worked in the garden, or was that Annette he was thinking of? Her hair — when did it change color again? It reminded him so much of the foam that washed up on the coast of the Northern Sea — but no, it was darker than that, wasn’t it? The same color as her eyes?

“Where are you?” he whispered one night into the cold air, his cloak wrapped around himself as he pressed his back to the husk of another destroyed house in another destroyed hamlet. “Where are you, Professor?” The others lingered at the corners of his vision, at the blackness that divided his world in two, but she wasn’t there. “Why aren’t you here?”

For once, there was silence. He chuckled bitterly. Of course. Of course she would not answer. She hardly spoke two words together when she was alive; why would she become chatty in death? 

Fine then. He could live without seeing her again. One less voice to please. One less reason to bring Edelgard’s head back — he already had plenty of those. Yes, he could live without seeing her, hearing her, feeling her again.

Could he? 

It killed him, this tug-of-war with himself, this ache in his chest that could never be healed. If she wasn’t there with the others, that meant she was alive. But he’d seen her fall. He’d heard Rhea proclaim her death. But Rhea could be wrong. And if Byleth was alive, why hadn’t she come to help him? Why had she abandoned him? Why let him nurse this frail, fragile hope in his chest, only to crush it? 

Goddess, he _ hated _ her. But no, he could never hate her, his beloved professor who taught him so much, who laughed with him over chamomile and scones, whose smile could knock the breath out of his lungs faster than Felix’s sword. 

It was when he saw the dying rays of the sun setting over the high steeples of Garreg Mach that the ache in his chest grew unbearable. Unbearable, yet somehow sweet. 

Without batting an eye, he killed the rats that scurried around to pilfer what hadn’t already been stolen. He bellowed out wordless roars as he saw one of them trying to enter the Professor’s room, slaughtering him in seconds. He had at least defended her territory (but the rest of the monastery was a ruin). 

Half of him urged him to move on. He needed to get to Enbarr, to kill Edelgard, to finally let the dead have their vengeance.

The other half of him just wanted to rest. 

He stayed for a week. Each day when he rose from his weary crouch at the height of the Goddess Tower, he told himself that today would be the day that he finally left for good. But the rats were still there, desecrating this holy space (he was no loyal patron of the Goddess, but this was where the professor had eaten, had slept, had lived — therefore it was holy), and so he could not leave. Each night, he prepared himself for the long journey that the morrow would bring, listening to the dead chatter and whisper, their images burning in his eye. 

She still wasn’t there. 

On the seventh day, he heard footsteps on the stairs leading up the tower. One half urged him to prepare for battle; the other half waited to see what would meet him. 

When he finally opened his eyes and the light shone down, he was half horrified, half relieved.

She was here. Byleth, Professor, Beloved — here, walking towards him in the light of day. 

_ Finally. _

_ No… _

And when she stopped in front of him, her hand stretched towards him, half of him wanted to weep in her palm, and the other half wanted to slap it away.

He did neither.

She was finally here, another cohort of the dead, and he couldn’t bear to look at her. 

“I should have known,” he whispered as the final embers of hope in his chest cooled, “that one day you would be haunting me as well.”

**Author's Note:**

> Once again, Florence's angelic voice is my muse as I churn out another Dimitri one-shot. Got inspired to do this when someone requested Dimitri angsting over not seeing Byleth as one of his ghosts during the timeskip. I sort of turned this into a weird think-piece/character study, but I hope it had enough of Dimitri pining for Byleth for you. 
> 
> Let me know what you think!


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